Anguished author of fine fantasy

Quasi Attuck

Crespo Tur Attuck rose up from where he had been crouching, surveying the terrain before him, looking for clues to the creature’s passing. It left no earthly impressions but left a strange trail indeed, none the like he had ever seen. Pressing a button on the control bracer secured to his left forearm, he caused the various analytic lenses embedded behind his eyes to retract and restore normal vision.

He closed his eyes and activated his enhanced neural processors to compile the visual information that he had just collected- the energy trail, atmospheric disturbance, and food trail pheromones- creating a coherent picture with which to work. The result both astounded and excited him. The creature propelled itself through the air in an undulating motion, generating enough lift to keep it from touching the ground. In this case just a couple of meters off the ground with no indication of how high it could go.

It was a new colony on a new world with new mysteries despite all of the surveying previously done, so they called in people like him. Some were investigative cyborgs, but Crespo wasn’t quite that far yet, he hadn’t earned that much money yet to make all the enhancements- he was a Quasi, choosing only key enhanced functions to aid him in his task and his wasn’t even sure he wanted to go full cyborg, cashing in all that humaness to live on the edge of humanity.

Toeing the mangled mass of the colonist at his foot who was completely drained of blood, he wondered at how much danger he might be putting himself into, how much power this thing possessed, and could he even kill it if it came to that. But, that’s what he chose to get paid to do, like it or not.

Labeling his find as ‘Aerial Undulant’ until further information, he sent his initial report off to the colonial council then checked the charges on his weapons and slipped the appropriate lenses back into place in order to track his quarry. Settling his pack on his back, he headed off into unknown danger.